On Saturday 14 April 2001 17:21, you wrote: > I aploogize if this is documented, but I haven't been able to find > it... are the new betas, beta3 and such, ok to use with the Via KT133 > chipset? I remember Beta1 and KT133 was bad news, but I can't find whether > or not it has been fixed. Thanks > Terrence The beta 1 and VIA AND large WD drives were a problem.... Now it turns out that there is another bug--affecting cross-channel data transfers of large amounts of data under DMA--a hardware race condition for those using the 686B Southbridge chip which goes in the KT133 KT133A and Apollo Pro chipsets. It is a HARDWARE bug which I understand VIA is now working on by helping mainboard manufacturers issue new BIOS versions to set up the PCI-IDE differently. The defense is to cripple the kernel at install time when a VIA chipset is seen. BTW, this bug while subtle ALSO corrupts data freely on Windows systems under the given circumstances, and that race condition may also occur intermittently (not reproducibly) in other two-channel DMA roles. See www.theregister.com April 13th edition for story and links to the actual tests. Civileme
